Food just for us!

I quite like the flexible approach to food explained in the articles further down on Virudh Aahar or the toxicity of certain food combinations. It makes more sense to me than the one size fits all – or latest fad – approach we are accustomed to. Articles: Food against us!

What I feel is missing however is the notion of ‘Doshas’ and how some foods that are good for one person are less appropriate for another. To learn the basics about this, I would recommend the easy to read books by Deepak Chopra. I myself started with Maigrir avec l’Ayurveda (which I am guessing corresponds to the book What Are You Hungry For) which is a really healthy approach to reaching your ideal, healthy, weight.

One of the book’s best resources, I find, is the weekly one-day fast with juices and soups. When you are able to keep it up, this fasting is a real help in keeping your body healthy, detoxing, transforming your dependence on food, helping you monitor food allergies or intolerances and keeping you weight in check. The difficulty with Ayurveda however, is applying it to our Western habits. With stress, professional lunch engagements, dinner with friends you just can’t cancel, and in my case, candidose-related sugar urges, 24 hour fasts every week have not been easy to keep up. To put a number on it, I have been unable to do them for some two years now.

So, this made me wonder to what extent, for people like me, intermittent fasting could be a solution. The thing is, with my specific Pitta-Kapha ‘Dosha’ combination and my Group A blood-type, the best thing for me seems to be to eat a protein-based breakfast, a hearty lunch and a light dinner of only vegetables. Skipping one of these meals on a daily basis – like the intermittent fasting diet suggests – throws the whole thing off balance, for days on end. And when I tested it out, what happened is that I started over-compensating at dinner, thus overloading my already weak digestion and gaining even more weight.

This is not something that ever happened with the 24 hour fast. So, my guess is the more traditional approach to fasting is better suited for me. But like I said, I have been unable to apply it lately.

I just have to accept that and remember that it does not mean I cannot go back to it when I feel ready. In fact, my little victory this week is that I did fast for a day. I am not saying I will be able to do it again next week, but it is a step forward.

It is all about doing the best you can within the limits of what is possible at a given point in time.

Essentially, what came out of the experiment, is that working on accepting my shape, my weight, my insufficiencies, respecting myself, and being kind to myself are more important than absolutely wanting to stick to a certain diet.